NOT Related
by RikaDivani
Summary: He's annoying, he's flirty, and until today I was sure he was as bad as his fellow mercenaries. Doyle x Reader


NOT Related

A young boy of thirteen is jumping off a small aircraft, "Whooo!" Only to be caught by a flying reptile, with a long mane. She screeches and flies in a wide circle, slowly moving downward with the ship until it's landing and she touches down with it.

"I hate it when you do that." A girl of Sixteen is stepping out of the aircraft after a staircase drops from the side. The ship is about the size of a triple-wide trailer, with wings. It's streamlined, black, and sleek. "One of these days Zon is going to be distracted at exactly the wrong moment and you're going to go splat on the ground." She walks to him as he climbs off the reptilians' back and musses his white fringe of hair, and he takes it in stride, apparently used to the treatment. The rest of his hair is black, the white fringe seeming to spike separately from the rest of his hair.

"If you really thought it'd happen, you'd have me strapped to the seat until we landed." He grinned at her when she sighed and turned to start walking into the forest they'd landed by. The small valley next to it was filled with white and purple lavender. She taps her wristwatch and a hologram of the area comes up, an arrow pointing toward their destination. "So the shrine we're supposed to find, there's actually a Cryptid that people worshiped? It had to be really powerful, and probably could speak, you think?"

"I suppose anything is possible, but Father Doc would shudder to think you might consider a Cryptid able to speak. After all there's-"

"_**No Scientific Evidence."**_ They both intone together, the boy laughing, the girl smirking to herself as she wraps an arm around his shoulders.

"That's right. Now, stay close to me, and keep your senses open." Her eyes glint with an icy grayness as she walks on. The boy's eyes start to glow a light orange.

"You think I can practice using the universal senses on an actual mission sometime?" He sounds somewhat disgruntled.

"Stick to your Cryptid powers for now Zak. You still haven't gotten past the first hurdle for communicating with the univ-" They come out into a small round clearing, and they are not alone.

"Oh come on!" Zak throws his hands up, "Are you stalking us!?"

"Ah, The Saturday Children." The heavily accented voice belonged to a man in a golden mask, modeled after a skull. "Here to stop me from making my payday?"

"What... You can't take those artifacts!" Zak steps forward, gesturing at the altar. "You might anger a Cryptid Spirit. It might eat y- you know what? Go ahead." The girl smacks Zak lightly upside the head.

"We can't let them get eaten anyway, good guys remember?"

"Didn't know you cared." The second voice is gruffer and younger, under a silver helmet with the same basic design as the others'.

"Care? About you?" Her smirk was unaffected by his next words,

"Aw, come on. You know you can't resist me." They begin to circle each other, Zak and the girl on one side, The two skull helmeted men on the other.

"Zak, you fight his apprentice. I'm taking Van Rook." She squares off against the golden helmeted man, while Zak and the Silver helmeted man face off a few feet away.

"You didn't need to say it, it's how we always do this kind of thing. Unless mom and Dad are with us." Zak gets into a ready fighting stance. "Fisk! Are you gonna show up, sometime soon?" Zak pushes a button on his ear phone communicator to speak and they both hear a jumbled mass of grunts that simulates human speech.

"Wunna wamma roo loo?" It's slightly upwardly inflected at the end.

"I don't know, maybe help me fight the guy who's twice my size?" Zak responds.

"Bleh. No more talk, we taking artifacts now." He reaches up to hit the button to activate his jet pack.

"No, don't! She'll-" The girl hits a button on her wrist and the jet pack powers down once more. The apprentice sighs, shaking his head.

"Portable disruption device, remember?" She smirks lopsidedly with tight lips and holds up her wrist to showcase the handy dandy device.

"Ach. Stupid little toy."

He moves into a stance and lunges at her. His apprentice moves after Zak. A tall man-shaped primate ran out of the bushes and tackled him, Zak urging him on,

"Yeah! Nice one Fisk! Surprise Attack!" He lifts a strange looking staff into the air, hitting a button that causes a zip-line with a claw attached to grab the back of the Apprentice's outfit, which is the bunched hood. He yanks and the apprentice goes flying up and back, landing roughly on the ground as the line retracts.

The apprentice mutters as he climbs back to his feet and faces Zak and Fisk. "That kid is way too strong for his age." He cracks his neck and lifts a hand to it while he groans. "Mommy and daddy teach you that move, or big sister?"

Zak grins, "Stella always teaches me the best moves."

"Had a feeling it'd be her. She hits so _hard._" He rolls his neck and gets back into his stance. "Any chance we can just go our separate ways and I can actually get what I came for this time without a fight?"

"Doubtful." Zak rebuts as he crouches and thrusts his staff out offensively.

"Yeah I figured."

Stella and Van Rook are squaring off, a punch aimed for Stella's face going off center when she smacks his fist to the side with the back of her hand. "EHGH! You and your girly slaps!" She grins and flips backward suddenly, catching his helmeted chin with her foot and sending him reeling back.

"How about my flip kicking? Manly enough for you?" She dashes forward as he smacks into a tree from her kick and lands a flying twirl kick to his side, sending him wheeling sideways and having to cartwheel to end up back on his feet. He holds his side with his arm. She uses her opposite leg that hits the tree foot first to catapult backwards and back onto her feet.

"Pah!" He scoffs at her, "Like a butterfly's kiss!"

"So I can stop holding back, then?" She poses aggressively and starts to crouch,

"Holding back? Hey, maybe you should watch your mouth. If that's her holding back, she might crush you into jelly." The apprentice remarks as he and Zak trade blows just a couple dozen feet away.

"She is nothing!" Van Rook lunges at Stella and she and Zak dash toward each other at the same moment. With their opponents following them, they grasp hands and Stella swings Zak like a weapon. He smacks Van Rook in the face with his boots, and the apprentice dodges.

Stella and Zak let go and back away from the both of them. The apprentice reaches out to help up Van Rook, but he smacks his hand away and leaps to his feet from his back. "I don't need any help. Get that damn device!" They both start toward Stella and Zak steps in front of her, his claw at the ready in a two handed grip in front of him. Fisk steps closer to them, having been knocked down a small hill and only now coming back to his senses enough to return. He's still a little wobbly on his feet. "Heh." Van Rook extends his arm and hits a button, a zipline swooping past Zak to wrap around Stella's neck. He grunst as he pulls and she's tugged harshly toward him. She knocks past Zak with a choking sound and is grabbed by the hair when she lands on hands and feet in front of him. The apprentice tries to remove her watch but can't figure out how, Zak hitting his claw button to smack him in the face with it. "Ach! No time for this!" Van Rook picks her up as she still chokes and throws her backward into the pond near the shrine.

"Van Rook!" His apprentice seems horrified.

"What? Afraid she'll get her pretty hair wet?" He turns and kicks Zak as he tries to run past, catching him in the stomach and sending him flying back into Fisk. He starts to gag as the Jet pack on Van Rook's back starts to function again, and he takes off with a laugh.

The Apprentice looks back and forth between Van Rook and the pond, then to Zak who seems too out of it to do anything. She was already immobilized and being thrown into water wouldn't help her choking. He growled to himself and ran for the ponds' edge, jumping in and taking a deep breath before hitting the water. He swims down, switching on his heat vision in his helmet, it doesn't hold much air it looks like. But it seems to be water-tight, so he could probably see fine. He swims down to the bottom where she's lying, motionless, her hair just barely moving with the motion of the water.

His arm reaches out to grab her wrist and pull her up into his arms. He pushes off the bottom, kicking his feet furiously and coming out of the water with a leap so he lands half on the edge. The Apprentice lays Stella out and looks her over. She's pale, her lips turning blue, and he realizes the zip line is still wrapped around her neck. He pulls out a knife and cuts it away as Zak runs toward them. "Stella!?" He kneels next to her, seemingly forgetting that the Apprentice is there. "She's not breathing!"

"Yeah, and she's not gonna like this, but when you tell her about it, make sure to play up the heroic angle." Zak glances at him in confusion as he takes off his helmet and sighs, "God, she's gonna punch me twice as hard next time." He leans down to tilt her head back and cover her mouth with his. He performs CPR, doing chest compressions and breathing for her. He has to do it at least four times before she starts to cough and gag up water. He turns her over and holds her up by her waist so it'll run down her body and out her mouth from her lungs. Zak is patting her back harshly, trying to dislodge as much of the water as possible as fast as possible. "You're gonna have to wrap her neck, not too tight, and use antiseptic and antibiotics on the gauze." The Apprentice is setting her down on her side while water continues to slowly leak from her mouth and she chokes a little. "You saw what I was doing, so if she stops breathing again, you know what to do, right?" The Apprentice stands up and steps back, putting his helmet back on.

"Wait!" But he ignores Zak and flies off with his jet pack.

Zak is left looking down at Stella with fear and worry. "It's okay Stell. You're gonna be okay." He kisses her cheek as she continues to cough and splutter water from her lungs.

"Z-... Hack!"

"Sh. It's okay, I'll take care of you." He rolls her just enough so he can push the hair away from her throat. It's been cut deeply into, it really will need to be wrapped. "Uh. Fisk!" He yells for the disoriented Cryptid as he shakes off his dizziness enough to stumble over to them. "Watch her, keep her on her side, if she stops breathing, yell for me." Zak takes off running for the clearing where their aircraft is parked and comes upon it pretty quickly. Time seems to speed up around him as he dashes inside and unhooks a large first aid kit from the wall. "Antiseptic... Antibiotics..." He searches until he finds both bottles and some gauze, along with a pain relief cream and medical tape.

When Zak gets back to her, he drops the pile into Fisks' arms and pulls her upright. "You're better with this stuff than I am Fisk." The Cryptid makes a vaguely speech-like mutter of irritation and starts to pour antiseptic on her wounds around her neck. He smears the antibiotics and pain relief cream on her neck and wraps it in gauze. He tapes it up and Zak sighs in relief when she stops coughing up water and just relaxes, unconscious into his arms.

Stella Saturday P.O.V.

The feeling of warmth is familiar. A slim, very warm body is curled inside my arms. I used to let him in when he had nightmares, just letting him lie there in my arms so he could sleep without fear. Then later he'd come in just because he was depressed, because of course... Nightmares stop when you realize you're stronger than most of the monsters. Zak struggled with the realization that he had powers and abilities that no one else did his whole life. And I was always there to help him. Zak was three when I met him. I'd been living in nature with the Cryptids. I had no emotions, just walked around like an intelligent beast that wasn't intelligent enough. Not enough. Not to speak, not to communicate with people at all. If they came near, I'd run, jump into a tree, climb up to the top and crouch there. Zak was the first person to speak to me, that I can remember. I was six, had no prior memory of a family, and didn't like humanity. He smiled at me, through all my dried mud and blood and ripped clothes, he'd seen a person. I'd decided that he was special, and as the boy in my arms shifts in his sleep, I grip him tighter to my chest. He wasn't just my adopted baby brother, he was the center of my universe. The universe gave a twinge in my head that irritated me. And then it seemed to laugh at me. Of course the universe was never just one thing at once, and so it cried as well. It laughed, it cried, it sang. It surrounded me with a feeling of warmth and comfort, as well as cold and isolation. The universe couldn't help that it always had two sides along with a neutral in between, but it did tend to make my emotions erratic. Though no one ever noticed but Zak.

I get up and walk onto the bridge to see that Zak has engaged the invisibility drive. Komodo and Zon are sleeping in their own beds, Zons' is a nest but... Eh. Semantics. I walk to the pilot seat and sit down, punching in my code for the tapes. Zak and I both wear the earphones that record everything. I play through them and up to the encounter when mine went dormant because of the water muffling everything. Then there was a sloshing sound, and I was hearing the water being displaced as I was dragged to the surface. Zak? Fisk? Then we erupted from the water and the coughing I heard was too masculine and human and old to be Zak or Fisk. I frown at the screen, and when I hear his voice, it puts a zolt through my spine. I hit pause and glare at the screen with the volume levels. "He jumped in after you." I turn to Zak, standing behind me, leaning on his arm against my seat. "I couldn't really believe it either. He gave you CPR until you started breathing and flew off when you were out of danger of death." He sits in his co-pilot seat.

"He's never shown any restraint before." I frown and tap the desktop with my fingertip. "What was different about this time?"

"I don't know. But don't you think it's kind of weird?" I blink and turn to look at him. "You know, how we never really got into mortal danger with Van Rook and his Apprentice. I mean sure, Van Rook has been all set to kill or maim us, but his Apprentice..." He shakes his head, "He's always throwing us away from ledges instead of over them,and he usually gets thrown into Van Rook right when he's about to hurt us. I think he actually eggs someone on and puts himself in the position to do it." Zak looks exhilarated. "Remember how those guys you meet are all big and tough and scary and then they jump in front of a car for somebody and say it's because they owed them something? It's because they want to look tough and not seem like they have a weakness." I look into his excited, happy eyes, and can't help my suspicion. But I won't say anything about it.

"Maybe. But keep your guard up anyway." I pat him on the head, "If he wants to redeem himself in the future, that's fine. But for now, he's still fine with punching us in the face and knocking us out." He nods,

"Yeah I guess."

We went back out to collect whatever data we could from the ruined Altar. It was a wonderfully crafted piece of wood that had hardened into rock over the years. Zak tried to meditate with me as we sat in front of it, me with universal senses, him with his Cryptid powers. I could feel a lot of sentiment clinging to it, but there hadn't been anyone near this altar in centuries. "Zak, we should go home. Whatever they worshiped, it's not around anymore."

"Okay..." He sighs and stretches, "But we've gotta pick some of these flowers for mom." He gets up and starts to pick the multicolored wildflowers.

"Be careful of any stickers Zak." I start to hover over him a bit, and he gives me a look over his shoulder.

"You know you can just go back to the ship. There's nobody out here... I can get some flowers by myself." I bite my lip and walk toward the ship. 'You can do that. You can let Zak do this on his own. There's no danger, no risk.' And yet I was anxious and unsure. There were no instincts involved, I was just an overprotective mother hen.

Zak eventually gets back on the ship and starts binding his bouquet with a ribbon. I start up the engines and lift off. Fisk is helping Zak when I look back, Zon keeping Komodo away so he doesn't eat the flowers. I put the flowers high up in a locked cabinet for Zak and he sits in his co-pilot seat and brings up his game on the screen in front of him. I sit next to him in the pilot seat and wrap an arm around his shoulders so I can lean on him and watch. It's moments like this that make you happy, even if you never knew it. Just sitting, being near someone you love. Your family.

It was a few hours before we made it back home, but mother Drew and Father Doc were waiting for us and happily embraced Zak. They patted me on the shoulder because I detest to be touched, and asked me for a full report. Though of course not in so many words, "How did it go? Was it interesting?" Mother Drew was always trying to interest me in something, since Zak was my only focus. I usually just ignore her attempts.

"It was confusing as hell." I deadpan and walk into my room, shutting it behind me.

With the Family

A woman with white hair and dark blue eyes is frowning at Stella's closed door. "Zak?" She turns to Zak and he grins, excitedly telling the tale of earlier that day and the day before.

"So we met up with Van Rook and his apprentice-"

"Again?" A man with black hair and a white stripe down the center of his head was crossing his arms and looking up, as if thinking.

"Yeah, I know... It's like they're everywhere." Zak shrugged and opened his mouth-

"No, they're not everywhere. We've yet to run up against them since you guys started doing things by yourselves... Do you think they go where the kids are going on purpose... Because they're easier to fight with than us?" She frowned.

"They'd have to know where we were going!" The man growled, "Our computer systems... They can't be hacked, not by some idiot like Van Rook."

"Maybe it was his Apprentice." Zak spoke up with a thoughtful look on his face.

"What?" She kneels next to Zak, "Why do you think it's him?"

"Well, mom..." He grimaces, "I think he might be smarter than he seems." Zak pouts, "But you'll wanna hear the next part of the story, so don't interrupt!" Drew smiles, patting his head.

"Okay, honey. Go on." She sits back in a kneeling crouch and he sighs.

"Okay so we take up our usual positions, me and Fisk versus the Apprentice, Stella versus Van Rook." He takes a fighting stance as if back in the moment. "We fight for a while and then me and Stella are together. Van Rook shoots some cable thing that wraps around her neck-"

"Her neck!?" Drew exclaims.

"Mo-om!" Zak glares at her childishly.

"Okay okay, tell me what happened next." She's looking at him intently.

"Van Rook tried to get the Apprentice to take off her wristlet but they couldn't get it off, so he threw her backward into the pond nearby." There were gasps. "She still had the cable wrapped around her neck, so I ran to get her, but Van Rook kicked me in the stomach and I went down, gagging and barely able to move. Fisk was still loopy from a knock to the head, so no one was left to save her. But-" His grin got wide. "Then I saw Van Rook flying off... _and his apprentice didn't._" He was excited now. "He jumped in after her!"

Both parents' eyes were slightly wide and blinking now. "And when he got her out and I stumbled over to them because my breath was back and I wasn't gagging anymore, he cut the wire off her neck and gave her CPR until she started breathing again! Then when she was okay... he flew off." Zak frowned. "Why did he leave like that? It's not like we were still going to fight or something."

"..." His mother looked at his face, the confusion and hurt evident. "Zak, we don't know this man. You shouldn't be so worried about what he thinks of you. He's our enemy."

"But that's just it, mom... We _don't_ know him."


End file.
